Thursday, August 11, 2011

A Shop Also Rises, Part I: Workbenches

There is no denying that the inside of our home is extremely comely. Our cute one story brick house has been done up to the eight and a halves (would be "the nines" if only I would finish our bathroom renovation...), but it's low slung brick facade hides a secret.

A menacing secret.

Below our small house hides a HUGE unfinished basement. Frequent readers of this blog already know that our basement exists, its walls are an ugly green, and it is primarily used for the storage of a mountain of cardboard boxes. From the very beginning, I knew that the basement had the potential to be more than just a room full of junk, and growing up helping my Dad with "Appalachian" wood projects taught me that a true man needs to have a shop of some kind. I figured that I owed it to myself to create a shop down in the basement.

Pictured: Manliness

When I started putting the "shop" together, it mainly consisted of my excellent Ridgid compound miter saw (a wedding gift from college roommates) sitting atop an old desk, so my first order of business was to knock together a couple of workbenches from 2X4s and 1/2 inch plywood. I built a matching pair to a comfortable height for me with the table top of each just below my elbow. I also added locking casters to the bench on the right so that bench is free to roll across the concrete basement floor.

Mobility = Versatility

Next, I added pegboard and pegs to the rear of the stationary workbench for storing frequently used hand tools. I also organized most of my small parts and fasteners that were scattered throughout the basement and placed them in a red small parts bin and set it on the stationary workbench. I drove nails into the stationary workbench to hang additional tools and accessories. Finally, I placed the miter saw on the mobile workbench for cutting wherever the project demands!

With the workbenches done and against the wall, I moved the old desk in behind to use as an auxiliary service and staging area. Despite what the pictures show, I'm trying to prevent the old desk from becoming simply a place for stashing junk... we'll see how that goes.

There's a shop somewhere under all that mess.

That's it for Part I. Stay tuned for an exciting sequel in which the shop obtains a new tool!